Automated Model-Based Test Case Generation for Web User Interfaces (WUI) From Interaction Flow Modeling Language (IFML) Models

Abstract

Since the emergence of web 2.0, the architecture of web applications has been transformed significantly and its complexity has grown enormously. In such web applications, the user interface (UI) is an important ingredient and with the increased complexity, its testing is getting increasingly complex and cost/time-consuming process. Recently introduced, interaction flow modeling language (IFML) is an object management group (OMG) standard. IFML is gaining popularity for developing web applications, primarily, because of its excellent features for modeling UI elements, their content, and their interaction capturing capabilities. However, despite its superior UI modeling features, its UI testing is accomplished through traditional time-consuming techniques, which are employed after implementing the UI code. Hence, to overcome these limitations, this paper introduces a novel model-based testing approach for IFML UI elements. The proposed approach provides complete navigation testing using formal models. Moreover, the approach transforms the IFML models to all necessary UI testing artifacts by generating state transition matrix plus detailed UI test case document. As a part of a research, model-based user interface test case (MBUITC) generator tool is implemented to automatically generate navigation model for formal verification, test case document, and transition matrices from IFML models. The applicability of the proposed approach is validated through two benchmark case studies. The results have shown that the proposed approach provides test cases at the early stages of development, i.e., specification and analysis, which eventually helps in building a right product at the right time at a comparatively lower cost.